Information as a Catalyst: Enhancing Citizens' Engagement Against Economic Inequality

High economic inequality has many negative consequences but an electoral reaction in form of higher support for redistribution-friendly parties, is not observed. In this paper, we take a different approach and study how perpections of inequality link to direct political action against it. We address two questions: (1) who is likely to become politically active against inequality? and (2) can the provision of information change this pattern and increase the likelihood to become active? Based on a four-country survey and experiment, we show that personal salience, ideological leaning and biased perceptions of inequality are important predictors to get active. Providing information on the topic helps and this effect is more pronounced for citizens scoring low on political sophistication. Our findings have important implications for how to make economic inequality a more relevant issue and the role that information can play in this process.